Mountainsmith Blaze

The blaze is a poorly designed and poorly made lumbar pack. Ostensibly, it appeared perfect for my needs as a wilderness instructor: a small lumbar pack with two water bottle holders and pen holders for paperwork along with lots of little compartments to organize smaller pieces of gear.

But the water bottle holders do not secure a standard 32oz Nalgene, and the zippers are fragile and the elastic webbing to secure the bottles breaks easily.

I exchanged the first one because of broken elastic and broken zippers but the replacement has the same issues.